THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MICHELANGELO

-----------------------------------------------------------------------MICHELANGELO
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------Michelangelo di Ludovico Buonarroti Simoni (known as
Michelangelo) was born on 6 March 1475 in the Tuscan town of
Caprese, near Arezzo. His family were natives of Florence and
they returned to the city within a few weeks of the birth, when
Ludovico Buonarroti's term as mayor of Caprese had ended.
Soon after their arrival, the Buonarrotis sent the baby to a
wet-nurse living on the family farm a few miles away in
Settignano. This environment seems to have had a crucial effect
on Michelangelo, for the area around Settignano was full of
stone quarries. His wet-nurse's father and husband were both
stonemasons, and Michelangelo often jested later in life that
"with my wet-nurse's milk, I sucked in the hammer and chisels I
use for my statues".
From an early age the young Michelangelo was consumed with
artistic ambition. As a boy of 13, he persuaded his reluctant
father to allow him to leave his grammer school and become an
apprentice to the artist Domenico Ghirlandaio, one of the most
successful fresco painters in Florence.The young Michelangelo's
prodigious skill - and, perhaps, his single-mindedness - soon
aroused jealousy among his fellow students in the garden. His
biographer and friend, Giorgio Vasari, tells of how another
young sculpter, Pietro Torrigiano, later described as a bully,
punched him violently in the face, crushing and breaking his
nose. Michelangelo was deeply upset by the incident, and by the
disfigurement to his face - physically, and psychologically, it
seems to have marked him for life.
Michelangelo's skill now attracted the personal attention of
Lorenzo de' Medici (called the Magnificent), who was effective
ruler of Florence at the time. He was so impressed by a statue
Michelangelo was carving that he invited him to live in the
Medici household.
CHANGING FORTUNES
Michelangelo spent two happy years in the Medici household and
worked on an impressive marble relief, /The Battle of the
Centaurs/. But when Lorenzo died in 1492, Michelangelo's
fortunes began to take a downward turn, and he went bact to live
with his father. Lorenzo's successor, Piero de' Medici, was
friendly to the artist but had little interest in art. Indeed,
the only work Piero commissioned from Michelangelo was a
snowman, a childish whim after a heavy snowfall in January 1494.
As a consolation, Michelangelo devoted his skills to a detailed
study of anatomy by dissecting corpses in the church of Santo
Spirito - a curious privilege bestowed by the prior in return
for a carved wooden crucifix.
Under piero's rather haphazard reign, political Florence became
increasingly unstable and blood and thunder preachers found wide
audiences. A charismatic Dominican called Savonarola had a

particularly disturbing influence, denouncing the corruption of

Florence and prophesying the imminent doom of the sinful city.
The invasion of Italy by Charles VIII of France added fuel to
the unrest. Apparently, with the words of Savonarola ringing in
his ears, Michelangelo packed up and left for Venice in October
1494 - the first of his many "flights".
A VISIT TO ROME
In 1496 Michelangelo was summoned to Rome as a result of the
famous "Sleeping Cupid affair" which had made him a reputation.
Here he carved the marble /Bacchus/ for the banker, Jacopo
Galli, and the famous /Pieta'/ (below), now in St Peter's, for
the French Cardnial Jean Bilheres de Lagraulas.
The startling beauty and originality of the /Pieta'/ brought
Michelangelo enduring fame. He was soon being heralded as
Italy's formost sculptor. By 1501, he was able to return to
Florence as a hero. There he carved the magnificent statue of
/David/ further enhancing his reputation. The statue was placed
in front of the Palazzo della Signoria, where it stood as a
symbol of Republican freedom, courage and moral virtue.
The legendary sculptor went from strength to strength. Soon
after the death of Pope Alexander VI he was summoned back to
Rome to serve the new Pope, Julius II. Julius was the first of
the seven popes that Michelangelo worked for and their
relationship was tempestuous.
In the spring of 1505, Julius commissioned Michelangelo to
create a tomb for him. It was to be a free-standing shrine with
over 40 statues, a grand monument to himself. The scale of the
project suited the scope of Michelangelo's vision, and he spent
eight months enthusiastically quarrying marble at Carrara. But
the Pope soon began to grow impatient at the lack of results and
gradually started to lose interest.
A PLAN FOR ST PETER'S
By then, the Pope had concieved an even grander plan for the
complete rebuilding of the church of St Peter's in Rome, and he
had entrusted the design to his favorite architect, Bramante.
When Michelangelo returned to Rome, burning with desire to make
his magnificent vision live, the Pope refused to see him.
Michelangelo left Rome for Florence in a fury, deliberately
leaving the day before the laying of the cornerstone for the new
St Peter's. Pope Julius matched his wrath, however, and sent
envoys and demands for his return "by fair means or foul".
Eventually Michelangelo succumbed, and went to the Pope with a
rope around his neck - a sarcastic gesture of submission.
Julius, who was in a more amenable mood, having just conquered
Bologna, rewarded Michelangelo with a commission for a colossal
statue of himself, to be cast in bronze. (The statue was later
destroyed)
Michelangelo was still dreaming of completing the tomb, but
Julius was bent on redecorating the Sistine ceiling.
Michelangelo eventually accepted the commission, possibly goaded
on by Bramante's suggestion that he might lack the ability for
such a task. But he always insisted that painting was not his
trade, and he again tried to get out of the commission when
spots of mould started to appear on the first section of his
fresco. By 1512, after four years of exhausting labor, however,
the ceiling was finally completed. When his work was unveiled,
the effect was awe-inspiring and people would travel hundreds of

miles to see this work of an "angel". As usual, Michelangelo

sent the money he recieved for the work to his demanding family.
Julius died in 1513, leaving money for the completion of his
tomb, and Michelangelo moved some marble he had quarried from
his workshop near St Peter's to a house in the Macel de' Corvi,
which he kept from 1513 until his death. Successive popes were
keen that Michelangelo should work for their own glory, and
distracted him with other commissions.
Then, in 1527, Rome was sacked by the Imperial troops of Charles
V, a mainly protestant army bent on the destruction of the
Papacy. An orgy of murder and pillage followed and Pope Clement
VII was imprisoned in the Castel Sant' Angelo. The Medici were
yet again expelled from Florence, and the republicans put the
artist in charge of the fortifications of his native city. In
September 1529, fearing trechery, Michelangelo fled wisely to
Venice.
Eventually Pope Clement VII, then restored to power in Rome,
wrote to pardon Michelangelo and ordered him to continue work on
a chapel for the Medicis at San Lorenzo in Florence.
Michelangelo finished the tombs for the Medici chapel, but in
1534, three years after his father's death, he left Florence in
the tyrannical grip of Alessandro de' Medici, never to return.
Michelangelo went to Rome, where Pope Clement had in mind a
grandiose scheme for the decoration of the altar wall of the
Sistine Chaple. Clement died before the painting was begun, but
his successor, Paul III, set him to work on the project. /The
Last Judgement/ was painted from 1536 to 1541, and is a
terrifying vision expressing the artist's own mental suffering.
NEW FRIENDS
Michelangelo had always been a practising Catholic and was a
deeply pious man. In later life, his religion became profoundly
important to him. This was partly the result of his great
affection and admiration for Vittoria Colonna, the Marchioness
of Pescara - the only woman with whom he had a special relationship.
For Michelangelo was widely believed to be homosexual and it is
true that he showed a preoccupation with the male nude unmatched
by any other artist. In the 1530's, he seems to have fallen in
love with a beautiful young nobelman, Tommaso Cavalieri, to whom
he wrote many love sonnets. Michelangelo insisted that their
friendship was Platonic - he believed that a beautiful body was
the outward manifestation of a beautiful soul.
Michelangelo was naturally a recluse. He was melancholic and
introverted, but at the same time emotional and explosive. He
lived a temperate life, but in a fair degree of domestic squalor
which no servant would tolerate for long. He preferred to be
alone "like a genie shut up inside a bottle", contemplating
death. In 1544 and 1545 he suffered two illnesses which did
actually bring him close to death. Evidently the great papal
commissions had weakened his condition.
Paul III made Michelangelo Architect-in-Chief of St Peter's, and
his work on the church continued throughout the rest of his
life, under three successive popes - Julius II, Paul IV, and
Pius IV. He tried to return to the simplicity of his old rival
Bramante's design, but St Peter.s was not finished in his
lifetime, nor exactly to his designs.
Finally, in his old age, Michelangelo also had time to work for
himself and the sculptures of this period, such as the /Duomo
Pieta'/ (below), reveal an intense spirituality and tenderness.

Pope Julius II used to remark that he would gladly surrender

some of his own years and blood to prolong Michelangelo's life,
so that the world would not be deprived too soon of the
sculptor's genius. He also had a desire to have Michelangelo
embalmed so that his remains, like his works, would be eternal.
As it happened, Michelangelo outlived Julius II, and was buried
with great pomp and circumstance after his death on 18 February
1564.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------THE MAKING OF A MASTERPIECE
THE SISTINE CHAPEL
On 10 May 1508 Michelangelo signed the contract for the
decoration of the Sistine Ceiling - a momentous task which was
to pose one of the greatest human as well as artistic
challenges. The work had been commissioned by Pope Julius II,
whose uncle Sixtus IV, had authorized the building of the
Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. On the walls were 15th-century
frescoes showing scenes from the life of Moses and Christ, while
the ceiling was a traditional star-spangled blue. Julius,
however, who was bent on the whole-scale "restoration" of
Christian Rome, wanted something grander and more "progressive".
By July, the scaffolding was in place and the cardinals, who had
complained of the noise and rubble, were able to conduct their
services in peace. A few weeks later, five young assistants
arrived in Rome, but on finding the door of the Chapel bolted,
they took the hint and returned to Florence. In the end,
Michelangelo painted the ceiling almost entirely alone,
triumphing over months of tremendous physical discomfort.
The completed ceiling was unveiled on 31 October 1512. "When the
work was thrown open", reported Giorgio Vasari, "the whole world
came running to see what Michelangelo had done; and certainly it
was such as to make everyone speechless with astonishment".
(above)The "/"ignudi"/, or nudes, seated directly above the
Prophets (on the ceiling) and Sibyls, may represent "angels",
although they seem to be an entirely personal contribution. They
support bronze medallions, attached to garlands or acorns - the
heraldic device of the Della Rovere family of Julius II.
(above) In the 1980's restoration work began on the Sistine
Ceiling frescoes. Centuries of grime was removed to reveal the
original state of Michelangelo's paintings. This lunette with
Matthan, one of the Ancestors of Christ, shows that the artist's
colours are much crisper and brighter than is often supposed.
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